


Gifted

by MrProphet



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 04:33:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10689822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	Gifted

The jar sat and brooded. It ought not to have been possible for a jar to brood, but this jar managed it. 

Epimetheus  _hated_  the jar, not for its brooding ways, but for the black-painted figures decorating the red surface. Artistically-speaking, the jar was a thing of great beauty, but the scenes depicted showed the life of Prometheus: Prometheus creating the human race; Prometheus stealing fire from Olympus; Prometheus tricking Zeus out of the best part of the offering; Prometheus, Prometheus, Prometheus.

“Always Prometheus,” Epimetheus muttered.  _Everyone_  loved Prometheus. He had been gone for years and still cast a long shadow across his brother’s life.

“Epimetheus!”

The Titan closed his eyes in delight at just the sound of his wife’s voice. She was in every way perfect and she loved him, the way everyone else loved Prometheus. She never drew comparisons between the brothers and found Epimetheus wanting. Of course she probably would have loved Prometheus, if she had ever met him. She must have been so disappointed to find Epimetheus head of the household. 

Epimetheus could almost be  _glad_  that his brother was chained to a rock with an eagle pecking out his liver in perpetuity. “Because you  _weren’t_  here, brother, and she fell in love with  _me_.”

Pandora descended the stairs to the cellar. “Are you talking to that jar again?” she asked. When Epimetheus did not answer she put her arms around his waist and leaned against his back. Epimetheus was tall, but Pandora was almost his equal in height. Holding him thus, she was able to lay her chin comfortably on his shoulder, her soft cheek against his ear. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Sorry?”

“That you lost your brother.”

“Everyone’s sorry that Prometheus is gone.”

Pandora turned her head and kissed his throat. “I mean that I am sorry for you. I know you miss him terribly.”

Epimetheus laughed bitterly. “My perfect brother. Of course I miss him. Everyone loved him more than they love me; even I did.”

“I don’t.”

He shrugged free of her embrace. “But if you’d met  _him_ …”

Pandora looked shocked. “You think I’d have fallen in love with him instead? Epimetheus, I loved you from the first. Why do you doubt me when I have given you  _everything_  I have to give?”

“Because  _everyone_  loves him,” Epimetheus repeated.

“Everyone loves you, Epimetheus. Your people look to you to guide them; they trust in you absolutely. If you had not married me, you could have had your pick of the land to wife. You still could,” she added with a dangerous gleam in her eyes.

“They trust me because I remind them of him,” he insisted, “but I disappoint them at every step. And I don’t need or want another woman, Pandora.”

Pandora put her hands on his face and kissed him. “And I neither want nor need another man.”  
  
Yet still Prometheus preyed upon Epimetheus’ mind. He could not escape the feelings of inferiority every time he saw the fruits of human civilisation and heard the people praise Prometheus for those gifts. The certainty continued to grow in him that his own, small contributions would be forgotten and Prometheus hailed as the sole benefactor of mankind.

It was this certainty that led him, night after night, to the cellar, and the jar. The jar had been a wedding gift from Zeus. “A gift,” Zeus had claimed, “in honour of your loss. Something for all the world.” Epimetheus had willingly agreed to Pandora’s suggestion that the jar be kept in the cellar, out of sight and unopened. He had wanted to be rid of the images of Prometheus’s glories and Pandora had never trusted her own creator. With the certainty, however, came suspicion; suspicion of a conspiracy to deny him the smallest part of glory. He began to think that the reason Pandora wanted the jar hidden was that it had not been meant for him, but for Prometheus; that his beloved wife was simply waiting for his brother to return, so that she could betray her husband and hand this great gift to the all-wise Prometheus.

And with the suspicion, came determination; determination to know what was being kept from him. And so, one night, as he stared at the jar, he stepped forward and lifted the lid.

A howling torrent of darkness broke forth from the neck of the jar. Epimetheus felt a horde of evil spirits tear at his body but, failing to find purchase in his titanic flesh, they left him, sweeping up the stairs and out into the world.

*  
  
“No!” Pandora woke, screaming, from a nightmare as the cloud of spirits came spiralling from the cellar and scattered across the face of the Earth. She knew at once what had happened; that the fears her love for Epimetheus had buried had been correct after all. Zeus’s gift had been opened and it was worse than she could have possibly imagined.

She recalled Zeus’s words when he sent her forth from Olympus: “You will love the human race, and you will be the herald of its destruction. I tell you this not so that you can avert it – indeed, I lay upon you a curse of silence, that you may reveal these secrets to no other – but so that it may cause you pain.”

“But why?” she had begged. “What have I done to offend you?”

“You are human,” Zeus had replied. “You are the zenith and the acme of humanity, and even though I made you so, I can not forgive that fault.”

She had first determined to have nothing to do with humanity, but she had soon realised that Zeus and his siblings had instilled in her every art and skill and science and grace in their keeping. She knew how to sew and weave and spin; she could carve wood, shape stone and forge metal. She knew how to till the soil; to plant and harvest and mill the grain; to rear animals and butcher them; cook food and brew a thousand draughts both healing and harmful. She could write poetry and prose and music; play and sing and recite; paint and sculpt and work clay. She could reason and speak on philosophy, rhetoric and grammar. Moreover, she was possessed of grace of movement, mind and soul. Passion and compassion, moderated by a deep wisdom, ruled her actions and for all Zeus’s threats she found that she could not leave humanity to struggle in ignorance. 

It started small: She saw farmers struggle in the fieds and she taught them to yoke oxen to the plough. She saw children go cold in the winter and showed their parents how to shear and spin and weave and sew to make warm clothes to cover them. Yet all her efforts seemed to make precious little difference, and so she began to teach others what she knew.

That was how she came to the attention of the ruler of that land, and soon Epimetheus sent for the mysterious wise-woman. She went willingly, and when she saw Epimetheus she loved him for his beauty and the goodness in his kind, honest face. They were married and she thought that she might have escaped the gods’ curse, but then Zeus sent his wedding gift, the great jar, and she knew that he still plotted to use her against humanity.

And now his curse was loose, and the plagues and pestilences which rushed out from the jar would undo all of Pandora’s good work and more. Even as she stood at her window, Pandora heard the first wails of fear and anguish rising from the city streets and she fell down and wept for the horrors Zeus had unleashed through her.

In the morning, Pandora at last rose and went out into the city. The suffering that she saw there was beyond her worst imaginings, but she possessed the knowledge to help and she set to with a will. By nightfall she felt as though she had achieved nothing; by the end of the week there seemed more of the sick and desperate than ever before. That was when the first outbreak of fever struck her patients.

“It’s the water,” she realised. “The water is dirty; it’s carrying the bad humours.”

“I could dig a channel from the river.”

Pandora turned to see Epimetheus standing in the doorway. It was the first she had seen of him since he had opened the jar.

She ran and embraced him. “Are you alright?” she asked.

He nodded. “I heard what you were doing here, Pandora,” he said, “and I realised there was no use sitting and blaming myself.”

“It’s not your fault,” Pandora assured him. “Zeus… He cursed me. I can say it now,” she realised.

“But I opened the jar. I was such a fool, Pandora. Can you ever…?”

“Only if you never ask it,” she told him sternly. “Zeus is to blame.”

He nodded. “Then what should we do now?”

“It doesn’t matter!” Pandora sobbed, all the stress in her breaking loose of a sudden. “It’s over, Epimetheus! We can’t stop all of this sickness!”

“Perhaps not, but we can’t give up. Oh, Pandora, you don’t know what you’ve done already. People are coming here to help you, to learn from you; you’re giving them hope.”

“I brought them destruction!”

“ _Zeus_  brought destruction, but he made a mistake when he sent  _you_  with the jar. All these plagues can not destroy the human race, not while it has the gifts you bring; your grace and skills.”

Tears sprang into Pandora’s eyes. “You think…?”

“I know,” he assured her. “And I know that because of you, Zeus won’t win.” He smiled. “Prometheus would have liked you.”

She smiled back at him and then kissed him. “I keep telling you: Prometheus wouldn’t have got a look in. Now; you promised me a channel for clean water.”


End file.
